CORNERSTONE BIBLE CHURCH September 22, 2013 RESPONDING TO THE KING 04 JESUS AND THE RELIGIOUS Matthew 12:1–14 Illustration: Crazy, Stupid Laws • I’m sure you have heard some of these before, but there are some really crazy, dumb laws still on the books of cities and countries around the world that have never been removed from the books. So for instance . o In Samoa, it is illegal to forget your wife’s birthday o In Switzerland, you may not wash your care on a Sunday o In Milan, Italy, it is a legal requirement to smile at all times, except at a funeral or hospital. o In Pennsylvania, it’s against the law to tie a dollar bill on a string on the ground and pull it away when someone tries to pick it up. o In Oklahoma, you can be arrested for making ugly faces at a dog. o In Florida, it is illegal to pass gas in a public place after 6 pm on Thursdays. o Also in Florida, unmarried women who parachute on Sundays can be jailed. o In Blythe, California, a person must own at least two cows before he can be permitted to wear cowboy boots in public. o In Missouri, It is illegal to drive with an uncaged bear (Caged bears are OK) o In Maine, it's illegal to have Christmas decorations up after Jan. 14 o In South Carolina, you must be 18 years of age to play a pinball machine o In Idaho, it is illegal for a man to give his sweetheart a box of candy weighing more than 50 lbs o In North Carolina, bingo games can't last more than 5 hours • How about in the state of Ohio? o It is illegal to get a fish drunk in the city of Cleveland o In Bay Village, it is illegal to walk a cow down Lake Road o In Bexley, Ohio, ordinance #223 prohibits the installation and usage of slot machines in outhouses o In Cleveland, it is illegal to catch a mouse without a hunting license o In Toledo, it is illegal to throw a snake at anyone. o In Youngstown, you may not run out of gas Why are these so funny? Because they don’t make sense. But here’s the deal, they did make sense to someone at some point in time. They made perfect sense. At some point in time, someone made them; maybe because they were reacting to what someone had done, but certainly because they were trying to affect the behavior of people. That’s what laws do. They are created in order to frame a person’s behavior. 1 This is something that humanity is good at. We are really good at making laws and regulations in order to affect the behaviors of people. And there was nobody better at this than the religious leaders of Israel. They were master lawmakers and law keepers. They were quick to add to the teachings of Scripture with rules and traditions that made them look good. As we study the book of Matthew, one thing is starting to become apparently clear. The religious leaders did not like Jesus. They were not fans of Jesus, and certainly were not interested in following Him. They were always looking for opportunities to display their goodness before everyone, especially Jesus when He would break one of their man-made rules. They situated themselves as enemies of Jesus and that pattern continues to this day. ONE OF THE GREATEST ENEMIES OF JESUS IS RELIGION! This might sound strange to you; so let me define what I mean by this. When I say religion I mean outward, external behaviors instead of internal heart desires. The Pharisees were masterful at performing in order to make themselves look good externally. But Jesus wasn’t interested in that. In fact, this is one of the greatest enemies to what Jesus came here to do. He did not come here to simply clean us up on the outside. He came here to make us new on the inside. Of course that is going to affect the outside, but the only way to do that was to make us new internally. The problem is that these rules and regulations are still a temptation to many even inside the church that claims Jesus. It is so easy for these rules to become our substitute savior because, well, they are tangible. We can see them. And we feel better about ourselves when we are able to keep these rules. Keeping these rules can become our salvation. That is why we have lots of young children growing up thinking the little stars on their Sunday School chart for perfect attendance makes them more acceptable to God. And maybe that’s not just a kid problem. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. It is easy for us, to be more like the Pharisees than we want to admit we are, when we become a place where keeping rules becomes the goal instead of pursing Jesus. For many, keeping rules eliminates a need for Jesus. And this is so dangerous. Legalism (the view that we are made righteous through our obedience) is one of the greatest enemies of Jesus Christ. If you think you are better or more acceptable to God because you don’t celebrate the pagan holiday of Christmas, you are probably well on your path toward danger. Tullian Tchividjian in his book, Jesus + Nothing = Everything (which I would highly recommend) makes this observation . “Legalism preserves our illusion that we can do this. On our own, we can generate the meaning and purpose and protection and significance we crave—a craving which will crush us if it isn’t satisfied. We can do it—all it takes is doing the right things in the right way at the right time. Work hard enough at it, and all we deeply desire will be ours. And we’ll congratulate 2 ourselves, knowing we’ve achieved this without the help of others and without the help of God.”1 This is where we find ourselves at the beginning of Matthew 12 as Jesus confronts the religious leaders of Israel and calls out their religiosity. Their true colors of religion instead of a relationship with God were exposed one average Saturday afternoon as Jesus and the boys go for a little walk. Vs. 1–2 Jesus and His disciples are walking through some field on the Sabbath and we are told the guys are hungry. So, they pluck some of the heads of grain and eat them. We might not fully get this because we don’t often think like a 1st Century Jew. But let me point out a few things. It does seem strange to us that they would just walk through a field and pick grain and eat it. But that was a very popular thing to do, as they didn’t have McDonalds or Taco Bell to stop at when they were hungry. And in Deuteronomy 23:25, God says that it was okay for you as you walked through a neighbor’s field, if you were hungry, to pick some grain. God just said you were not allowed to bring a sickle with you and cut it down; i.e., you were not allowed to bring bags with you to fill up on their grain. It wasn’t a time for shopping, but snacking was certainly allowed. And so the problem is not that they ate grain from someone else’s field. The problem for the Pharisees was that it was the Sabbath. The Sabbath, which was Friday at sundown to Saturday at sundown, was a very big deal for the religious leaders. Keeping the Sabbath was of first importance for them. And it should have been, as it was the 4th Commandment. Exodus 20:8–10 “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work.” As we might well imagine, they wanted to obey this command, but in order to do so, they felt they needed to identify and expand on what God meant by “not do any work.” And in order to define that, they had to make rules and regulations, which became traditions on what was work and what was not work. For instance2—and this is one of the more obscure examples—they said that if you were to spit on the Sabbath and it landed on a rock, you were okay. But if it landed on the dirt and penetrated the dirt, that would be plowing, which is work. And so, in their religion, their relationship with God boiled down to where you spit on the Sabbath. But there are more examples. For instance, God had told them in Exodus 16:29 to not go out of their place on the Sabbath. But again, what does “not go out of your place” mean? When has a person travelled too far and “gone 1 Tchvidjian, Tullian. Jesus + Nothing = Everything. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2011), 49. 2 Many of these examples are found in James Montgomery Boice’s commentary on Matthew. 3 out of their place” and broken this law of God? They felt it was up to them to make laws governing how far was too far to travel. They decided that it would be allowable for someone to walk up to 1,000 yards on the Sabbath; beyond that would be sin.